Bottles of honey force closure of Californian airport

The suspicious material found inside luggage that prompted the shutdown of a
California airport has turned out to be honey.

2:00AM GMT 06 Jan 2010

A passenger's suitcase tested positive for TNT at Bakersfield's Meadows Field airport during a routine swabbing of the bag's exterior, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said. When security officials opened the bag, they found bottles filled with an amber liquid, he said.

"Why in this day and age would someone take a chance carrying honey in Gatorade bottles?" Mr Youngblood asked. "That itself is an alarm. It's hard to understand."

Investigators said the bag's owner, Francisco Ramirez, 31, was a gardener from Milwaukee who has been cooperating with authorities. He flew to Bakersfield Dec. 23 to spend Christmas with his sister and was returning when the alarm was sounded.

"It's encouraging that the system did work, because something is not right there," Mr Youngblood said. "The system worked the way it was supposed to, but it just takes time when you close an airport - and it costs a lot of money."

All flights into and out of Meadows Field were canceled for much of the day as authorities searched the terminal for other potential explosives.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office bomb squad was expected to perform further tests on the honey to determine why at least two false positives were recorded for both TNT and the organic explosive acetone peroxide, or TATP.

Investigators want to know whether any chemical Mr Ramirez uses in his gardening work could have left traces of potential explosives. They will also run tests on the honey to see if the smoke beekeepers use to subdue the insects could have triggered the false positive test.

Mr Ramirez was not arrested but authorities initially quesitoned his immigration status, but said later he is a legal, permanent resident of the U.S.